


the apathy that has made us

by activatingAggro (pigeonfancier)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-20
Updated: 2018-11-20
Packaged: 2019-08-26 13:05:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16682155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pigeonfancier/pseuds/activatingAggro
Summary: The sea is clean. It’s - mostly clean, honestly, because you kind of ruined it? There’s blood blooming across the water where the bodies had poured into the water, and even now that they’re mostly all safely stored in the hull, packed into the freezer until you get back home, it’s still frothy with the excess, and the way the fish are swimming through it. But even with that, it’s just a different kind of clean.Sort of like your deck. It’s mostly clean! There’s still a body or two lying around from where the ship had tried to board you, in a last minute gambit, but you’d gathered everyone together despite that. Nothing’ll rot in the ten minutes it takes for a speech, you think.“I know everyone likes Standard. All of the best soaps are in it, right? And, like, I know the Milfeule is super hot. Everyone thinks he’s hot. That’s fine! I’ve been there!”“But we are from I-J, not some isles-moored fucking excuse for a shanty town, okay? That means we speak Seacant. Not any of the mainland dialects. Not Temasek’s bile. And certainly not fucking Standard.” You hold out your hands. “It’s a useless, ugly language,” you say, flat, casting your eyes over the crew. “And we don’t need it.”





	the apathy that has made us

##  **CALICO KUANFU |** _7 SWEEPS / 15 YEARS OLD_

> _**EASTERN SEAS, ALTERNIA** _

“Okay, so, like, I’m not saying this to be cruel! I think we should make that clear, like, from the get-go, okay? It is going to sound like I’m being a dick, but I am not, and it’s important to keep that in mind. But this has been a problem for literally  _sweeps_  now, and personally, I’m getting tired of lecturing you guys on it.”

The best thing about being at the sea is the way that it  _smells_ : it’s iron, and it’s the strong teak that makes up your ship, and it’s the oil you use to polish it, and on top of all that, it’s the salt, permeating everything like a furred beast’s musk. The scavengers always like to complain that the lot of you stink when you come back to the Rickshaw, but everything’s just so much cleaner out here.

The Rickshaw smells like twenty thousand bodies and animals, living stacked on top of each other, and all the things that come from that. It’s meat, and it’s sweat, and it’s the blood that’s always spilling, and the sickly sweet rot that lies under it.

The sea is clean. It’s - mostly  _clean_ , honestly, because you kind of ruined it? There’s blood blooming across the water where the bodies had poured into the water, and even now that they’re mostly all safely stored in the hull, packed into the freezer until you get back home, it’s still frothy with the excess, and the way the fish are swimming through it. But even with that, it’s just a different kind of clean.

Sort of like your deck. It’s mostly clean! There’s still a body or two lying around from where the ship had tried to board you, in a last minute gambit, but you’d gathered everyone together despite that. Nothing’ll rot in the ten minutes it takes for a speech, you think.

“I know everyone likes Standard. All of the best soaps are in it, right? And, like, I know the Milfeule is  _super_ hot. Everyone thinks he’s hot. That’s fine! I’ve been there!”

“But we are from I-J, not some isles-moored fucking excuse for a shanty town, okay? That means we speak  _Seacant_. Not any of the mainland dialects. Not Temasek’s  _bile_. And certainly not fucking  _Standard_.” You hold out your hands. “It’s a useless, ugly language,” you say, flat, casting your eyes over the crew. “And we don’t need it.”

You’ve grown up with all of these trolls. They’re Rickshaw raised, through and through, and the best of the best for it: you know some other cities accept strangers from other caverns in, but the last Calico hadn’t, and you don’t have the patience for it, not unless they’re young enough it doesn’t matter. And trolls that young don’t head out to the ocean.

Not your parts of it, at least.

Most of your crew are nodding. Some of them look hesitant, but that’s okay! It’s not a big deal, if they’re not actually arguing. You might not be as old as the last Calico yet, or older than most of the crew, but you’ve never had anyone honestly challenge you yet. How could they? This is your city, and these are your people. They know you only want the best for them.

Which is why, when Minako bites her lip, you jerk your chin up immediately. “Minako,” you order, and the crew parts around her like the water. Her face blanches, then floods with sea copper, all at once.

It makes sense she’d be the one to balk. They’re always more emotional than the rest of the Rickshaw, but you know it’s not their fault. That’s why you let your expression soften when she steps forward. She kneels in front of you, bowing until her hair brushes the deck. “Calico,” she murmurs.

You let her linger there for a moment, then rap her gently on the back of the skull. “C'mon, get up, dude,” you tell her. “There’s no need for that. I just need to borrow you for a moment. Is that okay?”

They’re your people. You don’t have to be cruel, which is something the last Calico had never figured out. Minako grins up at you, anxious, fleeting. There’s blood on the tips of her hair, glowing green in the night’s light. “I guess so.”

“Great! Get one of the bodies for me, can you?”

Ingshi steps out of the crowd. She’s got the smaller of the two bodies neatly hooked under the armpits, and she hauls it forward with the ease born of indigo strength. But under your watchful eye, she doesn’t actually bring it to you: instead, she holds it out to her moirail, and Minako takes it, delicate, and hauls it the rest of the way.

You only step in when she stumbles. “Hey, hey -” You take the body from her, catching her neatly with your free arm. You’ve always been strong for a navy, but it helps that she’s slight. “The floor’s disgusting, dude,” you warn her. “You don’t want to slip in that again, okay?”

That earns you another fleeting smile.

“What I need you to do is, uh, here -” You fumble in your pocket. The entire crew’s watching, and you’ve never had stage fright, but.. well, no one can blame you if your palms are a little slick. You know what you’re doing! You were hatched for leading. “Take this knife for me, okay?”

And then you turn your attention back to the crew.

“What makes us different from other rickshaws is who we are,” you call out, pulling air from your gut so that your words boom. “We’re I-J. We might not have islands around us, and we might not have triple A’s cool two-headed lusus, but we have culture. We have history going all the way back to before we had spaceships. We have traditions from before there was even an Empire. And we have a language that encompasses all of that.”

“Do you think that you could read the Mariner’s Conquest in Standard? They don’t have the words for it. They don’t even have the feelings for it. If you ever tried to describe  _jeong_ , they couldn’t even understand what it means, because their language -”

“- it just  _hobbles_ them,” you say, earnest, looking out into the crowd. “It wrecks them, from the top to bottom, every single part of it. It wrecks them, and it wrecks their communities, and it’s built, from the top to the bottom, to just.. isolate you, and alienate you, from yourself and your community. You can see it in their videos, in their books, in the way people just talk about themselves in Standard. It’s, like,  _super_ sad. And we should feel really bad for them! That super sucks, right?”

“But just because we feel bad, that doesn’t mean we should sink to their level. When you see a lusus with a burr in her foot, Minako,” you say suddenly, turning to look at her, “would you stick one in your foot, just so you can both feel bad?”

“Um -”

“C'mon,” you prompt, “it’s not a trick question, dude, it’s okay.”

“No,” she says, shaking her head. “I wouldn’t.”

“Right! So we shouldn’t go speaking Standard, either, just out of sympathy for them. Learning it is - whatever, you can’t get around that, unfortunately. But speaking it? That’s just setting yourself on fire to keep somebody else warm. But, like, sorry, they’re on fire, too? So.”

“New rule! The two time I see people speaking standard, it’s going to be a warning, because I know it’s a hard habit to break, so we’re going to consider the first two times, like, my gift to to you guys, okay? But the third time.. hey, Minako, if you will -”

You like Minako! She’s always on the ball. She blinks at you, and then, when you tilt the body’s head towards her, she catches on all at once. She pries open the jaw with the end of her knife, reaches in, and -

\- well, now your deck floor absolutely isn’t clean. You always forget there’s a lot of blood still left in the mouth, but by the end of it, she’s holding up a violet-swamped tongue for the rest of the crew to see, bright as an amethyst in the moon’s light.

“- third time, I’m going to have to take it seriously,” you say, regretful, but earnest. “Sorry, guys. I’m not trying to be mean, but it’s got to be done. Any questions?”


End file.
